1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-sensing apparatus such as digital still cameras and digital video cameras. The present invention also relates to a data structure of an image file in which image data is stored. The present invention further relates to, in connection with such an image-sensing apparatus and an image file as just mentioned, an information providing apparatus, a terminal apparatus, an image display apparatus, and an image file recording method.
2. Description of Related Art
In the past, personally shot still and moving images were usually viewed by limited people—the photographer/shooter himself, his family, his friends, etc. However, with the recent spread of digital cameras and of information sharing services such as social network services (hereinafter abbreviated to “SNSs”) and so-called blogs, there have been an increasing number of occasions on which personally shot still and moving images are put open (published) to the general public. On the other hand, there has been increasing awareness of protection of right-of-portrait, copyright, privacy, etc.
Privacy etc. may be protected by use of restricted publication (restricted viewing) adopted in SNSs and the like, but this completely prevents unauthorized users (recipients of images) from getting to know the contents of restriction-target images. Since protection of privacy etc. is achieved by restricting publication of only such details as do need protection, it does not always fit the intention of a provider of an image to restrict the publication of the entire image.
By some conventional methods, out of the entire region of an original image, a face region or a text region is extracted, and this region is subjected to alteration, such as pixelization or blacking-out, so that the contents of the image in that region is unidentifiable. With these methods, however, once the alteration is applied, it is difficult to restore the original, unaltered image. This makes it impossible even for users authorized to view the original image to view its contents.